Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

Shanna Germain's  link to the short movie STRAND, recently got my interest in Numenera fired up again. Which led to a discussion of the game with Anne & Josh . In the course of conversation it came up that, while interest was expressed in the world and setting, certain things about the Cypher system hadn't set right with some of us.  In the subsequent days, this led me review my own laundry list of issues with what, at first glance, seems like an elegant system, but on closer inspection seems a bit kludgy. This in turn started the brainstorm as to how to fix things. Or at least patch them up while still making them compatible with published materials I enjoy: Fewer Dice and Calculations - Dice rolling seems needlessly complicated (adjust difficulty with multiple factors, multiply result, then roll against?  I tried to fix this once in the old CY6HER post awhile back and took a page from that.  The d20 is removed and uses just a d6 for all rolls i...

Reading through the first couple chapters of the Monte Cook's Cypher System, and it is pretty neat.  The only thing that seems a bit odd to me is the requirement to multiply a Difficulty rating (1-10) to a Target Number rating (Difficulty x3) which is actually rolled against.  This seems especially odd in the case of expending effort, where you spend several points to lower the difficulty, which in turn lowers the Target Number, which you then roll against. Also while reading, the three pool system brought to mind Michael Wolf's wonderful WYRM System .  This in turn led to wondering: Why not just roll a d6 for Cypher and cut out the x3 Difficulty conversion? Looking into this, there's little trouble so far in switching from d20 to a d6 system. Maybe as I read Cypher further there'll be a later section where the need to multiply by x3 will be better justified.  But in the meantime, the conversion seems pretty straightforward: Basic roll Th...